The Climate Drone That Goes Where Scientists Fear to Tread

The Manta explores and monitors Greenland's treacherous glaciers.

How much ice melted on Greenland last summer? Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) knew that dispatching a crew to the glaciers to find out was too risky. So to gather data that satellites could not provide, they turned to unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. The 6-foot-long, 45-pound planes, called Mantas, can run for about six hours on gas-powered engines and fly as high as 16,000 feet. They are built by Advanced Ceramics Research and fitted with scientific equipment by NOAA.